Month: May 2013

One of the best ways to show a genuine concern and love for others is to ask people questions about their family relationships. This past week, I asked a co-worker what she was doing to celebrate Mother’s Day. The question immediately evoked a visceral reaction. As happens all too often, this lady and her mother did not see eye to eye and she definitely was not going to see her or celebrate Mother’s Day with her own mother.

After apologizing and lamenting the current state of her relationship to her mother, I mentioned something to the effect that I always try to help people reconcile. She made it clear to me that she had attempted many times to reconcile in the past with her mother and it was clear her mother had no intention to reconcile with her. Thereby, no Mother’s Day celebration was going to occur for this lady on Mother’s Day!

While the above scenario is a quite dismal one, it is far from uncommon. Reconciliation is a difficult road to traverse and for too many, a road that is untraveled.

I love the first definition that Noah Webster lists for reconciliation:

RECONCI’LE, v.t. [L. reconcilio; re and concilio; con and calo, to call, Gr. The literal sense is to call back into union.]

1. To conciliate anew; to call back into union and friendship the affections which have been alienated; to restore to friendship or favor after estrangement; as, to reconcile men or parties that have been at variance.

Community. A word that you hear discussed at length in different circles. You hear about your community on the local TV news broadcast. Often, there is an entire section in the local newspaper entitled, “Community.” And then there are churches and Christians who speak about “reaching their community for Christ.”

Lately, I have thought about this idea of community. As usual, I decided to look up the meaning of community as defined in Webster’s 1828 Dictionary. Here is what I found:

COMMUNITY, n.

1. Properly, common possession or enjoyment; as a community of goods.

2. A society of people, having common rights and privileges, or common interests, civil, political or ecclesiastical; or living under the same laws and regulations. This word may signify a commonwealth or state, a body politic, or a particular society or order of men within a state, as a community of monks; and it is often used for the public or people in general, without very definite limits.

3. Commonness; frequency.

On the whole, I personally believe that Bible-believing Christians have been largely ineffective at reaching our communities for Christ. I wonder if it is because we “dart” in and out of the communities we are trying to reach. We are so careful in not becoming like them, that we spend very little time in “common interests, civil, political or ecclesiastical” or “commonness” as Mr. Webster defines it.